Birmingham manager Alex McLeish will look to put a fortnight of frustration in the transfer market behind him by completing the double-signing of Armand Traore and Martin Jiranek on Tuesday.

The Blues have lodged an offer to sign 20-year-old Arsenal full-back Traore on loan until the end of the season while the club are thought to have begun negotiations with Russian side Spartak Moscow over a cut-price deal for versatile defender Jiranek, whose contract expires in December.

"We are trying our best to bring people in to improve the quality of the squad," said McLeish, who has added Ben Foster, Nikola Zigic, Enric Valles and Matt Derbyshire to his squad so far this summer.

"The near misses I've had with Dembele, N'Zogbia and others, that's unfortunate when you see how good these players are but there are other ones out there and we'll try and add somebody before 6 o'clock on Tuesday."

The Birmingham manager also revealed that the knee injury which Sebastian Larsson picked up against Bolton on Sunday is not as bad as first feared.

He said: "We thought it may have been a dislocated kneecap, something as severe as that, but it doesn't seem as bad as when he fell on the ground."